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Scott Darroch is Head of Strategic Communications and Engagement at Gas Safe Register
Gas Safety Week (16-22 September 2019) sees organisations from across the UK working together to raise awareness of the dangers of poorly maintained gas appliances, which can cause gas leaks, fires, explosions and carbon monoxide poisoning.

Ambition to Deliver sets out the sector’s vision to achieve this by creating a true offer for everyone. We work in an ever more challenging environment that requires innovative responses, but we match a moral heart to a business brain, and have done for decades. We must make our business case unquestionable to make our moral mission sustainable – and this Ambition goes a way to achieving that.

Housing associations are already building thousands of homes across the country, and are working towards delivering an ambitious 120,000 homes a year. We’ll provide great homes in the right places so anyone could consider living in a housing association home.

Housing associations are uniquely placed to partner with the Government and others to meet the nation’s housing challenges. We provide affordable and market homes, homes to rent and buy, and essential supported housing. Our homes are for young people, families, first time buyers, older people, and people who need support. We plan to house and help even more people over the coming years and we’ll continue to meet changing housing needs.

At its heart, this is simple: it all comes down to creating great places to live. So what do we mean by this? How can we work together as a sector to deliver our long-term ambition? How can we continue to develop our offer for everyone?

In this dedicated web area, you’ll find analysis and debate from inside and outside the housing association sector to challenge and inspire. We need to build strong partnerships with government, secure access to affordable land, and be able to operate freely as businesses, to really make this vision a reality. We will develop tools to help us better understand our progress towards these ambitious goals and we will be transparent about where we think we need to do more.

I hope boards will use the vision to challenge themselves, think about their individual ambitions, and consider how they are contributing to the collective success of the sector. This is a long-term ambition, and we won’t deliver it overnight. But through challenging and changing times, having a clear vision of where we want to get to will help us stay on course.